Washington, USA (CNN) – A spokeswoman for the US Department of Defense (Pentagon), told CNN, that the department is investigating how a group of internal emails to the US Special Operations Command appeared to be publicly exposed on the Internet and leaked unclassified data of what Almost two weeks without the knowledge of the army.
Pentagon spokeswoman Jessica McNulty explained that the Chief Information Officer of the US Department of Defense and the US Army’s Cyber Command are investigating the root cause of the accident, and “why this problem was not discovered sooner.”
The investigation follows the discovery by an independent cybersecurity researcher of three terabytes of unclassified Department of Defense emails on the public internet, apparently due to a server misconfiguration and dating back to February 8. That amount is equivalent to the standard capacity of storing dozens of smartphones.
Samples of emails that the researcher, Anurag Sen, shared with CNN date back to previous years, and included information about US military contracts and Defense Department employee requests and paperwork processing.
It is not uncommon for large organizations to unintentionally expose internal data to the Internet, but the fact that this was a Department of Defense email server has US officials concerned.
Special Operations Command is the Pentagon’s elite command responsible for counterterrorism and hostage rescue missions around the world.
The US Army’s Cyber Command’s participation in the investigation underscores the great importance it has taken in securing the US military’s sprawling computer network in recent years.
In the more than a decade since its formation, Cyber Command has played a larger role in hacking into the networks of cybercriminals and foreign governments, as well as in helping to defend military computer networks.
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